Queen‘s self-titled 1973 debut album (51 YEARS ago!) has been remixed and restored by Justin Shirley-Smith, Joshua J Macrae and Kris Fredriksson! You’ll see a new track listing, alternative takes, demos and live tracks – and for the first time ever, a Queen album with a new stereo mix. Take that, technology!
The 6CD + 1 LP “Queen I” box set is 63 songs with 43 brand new mixes. You get the restored original album, demos, rare live tracks, and previously unheard recordings from the band’s first-ever live performance in London, August 1970.
Guitarist Brian May writes in the CD sleeve insert notes, “This is not just a remaster. This is a brand new 2024 rebuild of the entire Queen debut album, which, with the benefit of hindsight, we have re-titled ‘Queen I’.”
May adds, “All the performances are exactly as they originally appeared in 1973, but every instrument has been revisited to produce the ‘live’ ambient sounds we would have liked to use originally. The result is ‘Queen’ as it would have sounded with today’s knowledge and technology — a first. ‘Queen I’ is the debut album we always dreamed of bringing to you.”
Drummer Roger Taylor says, “The first three years were really faith and fumes. We were penniless but we had a lot of belief in ourselves and a lot of energy.”
Queen started working on their debut album in May ’72, and spent the next four months creating magic. May says, “We’d work through the night and usually until 7 a.m. when the cleaners came in. It was us just grabbing little bits of time.”
Taylor adds, “You know, we just came in there right after Bowie had done ‘Hunky Dory’ and ‘Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust’ and he did both of those albums back to back, two great albums. So, we were very pleased to be there, but when we were there, we’d arrive at three in the morning and then go on, for all the hours that we could grab. It was just a grind. I wouldn’t say it was soul destroying because we were quite confident. We had a sort of innate, gentle arrogance, you know, we thought we were good and quite different.”
May says, “Although we had great technology around us, we really didn’t have much freedom to use it. We were regarded as the new boys who didn’t know anything, and nobody really wanted to listen to the way we wanted to do things.”
Taylor adds, “They had this very dead drum sound, and it was never the sound we wanted. They had a drum booth, and it was a well-known sound. It was kind of American. Very dry, quite fat, dead sound, which is not what I wanted. I wanted to hear the drums resonate, to hear the sound of the drum. I didn’t even have my proper kit in there. It was a bit rough really. So the album never sounded as we wanted it to.”
May adds, “We wanted everything to sound like it was in-your face. We had this incredible fight to get the drums out of the booth and into the middle of the studio and put the mics all around the room.”
Singer Freddie Mercury once said, “All of us were aiming for the top, and we weren’t going to be content or satisfied with anything less.”
May says, “Freddie was so convinced that he would be successful, he never doubted it. We were all precocious boys but he was another level. But we all shared this passion. And the energy grew and coalesced into something very powerful.”
And a final word from Taylor, “Essentially with the ‘Queen I’ box set we’ve made the actual album sound the way we wanted it to sound using the techniques that we have now. We’ve made the drums sound like they should sound and, the overall sound of it is better, the mixes are better. So it’s been a delight to improve it, to bring it up to where we wanted it to be. I have found one thing though that has amazed me listening to this album again and again is how bloody religious some of the lyrics are, you know, it’s really quite religious.”
What a debut. What a band. What a time for music!
